What is WordPress?

Licensed under GPL and built primarily on PHP and MySQL WordPress has become a strong content management system since its birth in 2001. It has refined itself into a more stable blogging platform than any other out there.

Installation:

The best thing about it is that even computer newbies can easily use it and build up a site in a matter of minutes. With its popular 5-minute Installation (that is available on their website and here also), setting up a WordPress site is as easy as 1-2-3, depending on if your host supports it. If the host is running atleast PHP version 5.2.4 or higher that means it supports WordPress. You can talk to your host and enquire about it. You can also use third party software that is sometimes available in the “CPanel” provided to you by your host. Software like “Fantastico”, Softaculous” and “1-Click Install” is usually provided by some hosts to ease the installation process.

Features:

WordPress offers users easy features such as option to change theme of site, and plugins which help you to achieve many objectives which were not possible before without going to the code and editing it. However that does not mean that we cannot mess with code at all. We have the option to tinker and tweak the code to our liking. In fact the themes that come bundled in WordPress are quite open for editing and tweaking to your needs if you can handle the code. You can also edit the plugins. The site header can be changed easily by going to header section.
You can change the visibility of posts that show up on the index page. You can also change the permalink structure so that the future links of posts/pages are made as you want them to be. By default they are made by number form.
For Example: abc.com/?p=123

Inserting a picture or movie in WordPress is quite easy. After clicking on the media upload button, you practically have to just drag and drop the file and that’s it. There are two editors while writing post.
1. Visual (WYSIWYG)
2. HTML (If you want to add/edit some html coding in the post you can go from here)

Note: With WordPress version 3.5, HTML editor is now named as “Text”.

The WordPress community is a strong growing community which is ready to help whenever you get stuck. They are friendly and provide support free of cost with in-depth tutorials and details.

Development with Time:

Michel Valdrighi (the founder of wordpress) started with blog system named as b2 cafelog (which was the founding stone for this unique blogging system). With the passage of time, WordPress saw the birth of many features in it. The UI has changed much since the start. The Plugins feature entered in the early version 1.2, while the Static Page and Themes came with the version 1.5. Also introduced in that version was the user-role function which helps us to define the user levels and permissions.

The Dashboard was introduced in version 2.5 and then the built-in theme installer came in version 2.8. In 2011 we were introduced with the Admin Bar, which helped us to create new post/page without going to the dashboard, and also helped in providing shortcut to Themes, Widgets and Plugins page right from the Admin Bar.

With the recent launch of WordPress 3.5 (code-named “Elvin”), Twenty Twelve theme has been bundled in it along with many other enhancements. The dashboard has become HiDPI (retina display ready). Screen Reader is supported more which opens more ease of access for the visually impaired. There has been complete overhauling on the Media section with major updates to Media Uploader and Gallery. As soon as you install/upgrade version 3.5 you are presented with a new Welcome Screen which offers help if you get confused. The color picker has also been updated.

Conclusion:

WordPress is by far the best blogging and content management platform that we have seen in years. As time goes by it is only getting better and better. Most of the popular sites are opting to it due to its friendly user interface and ease of access. Sites like of BBC and Casinoseurope, Tribune Media Group, Best Buy Mobile and Adobe Blogs, are already on the WordPress bandwagon. So When are you going for it?